Carpet Powder

When limited finances and tough odors collide, sometimes you are forced to live with the nastiness. However, it doesn’t have to be so.

I am not a big fan of smells that do nothing more than cover up other less pleasant smells. However, after living with the disgusting odor emanating from the carpet for longer than one should and after spending a ton of money having them professionally cleaned and deodorized, I decided to break down and buy a two dollar bottle of carpet powder. After sprinkling a generous amount of Glade Tough Odor Solutions on the living room and hallway carpet and letting it sit for about ten minutes, I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and started vacuuming. The smell was immediately gone and replaced by a clean scent. I even did the ultimate sniff test and dug my nose into our nasty carpets and breathed in deeply. After not detecting even a hint of grossness, and after rinsing my nostrils out completely because, ew, I think I may have found at least a cheap and temporary solution to cover our problem.

Now I suppose the next challenge I’m going to place this product under is the sofa and chair-and-a-half. I normally use Febreeze about once a week on these because, well, we have pets who use them and, even though I have pet quilts I made covering the seats and on the chair-and-a-half over the head rest where our cat Dexter likes to lay, they still smell. Hopefully it will work as well as it did on the carpet. However, the real test will be how everything holds up in a week or two.

I Hate Carpet

There are few things in the world that I hate. Carpet is probably number one on that list.

Hate is a strong word and one that I was taught as a child never to use. We could say practically anything except, “I hate you!” to each other, which is probably why my vocabulary is, well, colorful. Let me just clarify that I am typically okay with area rugs, since these are much easier to keep clean, but carpeted floors are a different story. With two guys and three animals roaming the house, it doesn’t take long for crappy carpets to look (and smell) crappier.

Here is the deal with the carpet in our house; it’s bad. I mean really bad. Like maybe it should’ve been replaced five years ago bad. It is mostly one, large matted mess that whenever it gets a little damp a new stain appears, signs that the pad beneath is filthy. I mean, I know we had them professionally cleaned and the guy used a ton more solution than normal as well as spent about three times longer than he would on a normal job, but even he was doubtful that was enough to do the trick. It also seems to have taken on a disgusting odor as of late, one that just does not want to go away. I can handle stains, but the olfactory assault is a little too much. Okay, a lot too much.

So while I was at the grocery store yesterday I wandered into the cleaning supply aisle and decided, what the hell, I was going to get a bottle of deodorizing carpet powder. I plan on sprinkling some down today and letting it sit for a good ten minutes before vacuuming it back up. Something tells me it will be a little more difficult than that, but at the same time, even if it only helps a little bit I’m okay with that.

Smells

With us having friends over for dinner tonight, it means we will need to clean. And make the house smell like anything other than what it currently smells like.

We have animals, and with them comes their peculiar odors. Between the cats and their cat smells and the smells that are associated with their litter boxes, and our dog with her dog smells and various skin allergies and all the smells associated with that, along with the fact that this carpet is ass-nasty and still has a funny smell after being professionally cleaned and deodorized, our house is full of randomly unpleasant smells. There is only so much Febreeze one can use on the soft surfaces.

And so now the dilemma is to locate the candles and various other nice smelling devices to counteract the not-so-nice smells that were probably hastily packed away without reference on the outside of the box as to what lies inside its cardboard compounds. Nice. Although this could work to our advantage as there shouldn’t be too many of those boxes left in the garage. Perhaps a quick peek will unveil the happy smells. I hope, anyway. Wish me luck.